Euro 2012: How Football Tournament can Beat the Scourge of Racism

Sol Campbell insisted on Monday's Panorama documentary that England fans should stay at home during the Euros, or risk returning in a body-bag, as footage was released by the BBC showing attacks on Asian students and regular Hitler salutes at matches in Poland and the Ukraine.

The images throughout the show were powerful and left even the most seasoned football expert with questions over whether the countries will be safe come the tournament, which kicks off on 8 June.

After the programme, arguments raged that England can be just as racist and that the footage in the documentary was highly selective. Critics argued that it had been taken from overtly tribal games to show Ukraine fans, in particular, voicing staunchly racist views.

In contrast to the racism purported to be endemic in Poland and the Ukraine the BBC has released a preview of Avram Grant's experience of visiting the Auschwitz concentration camp, in southern Poland.

The former West Ham manager's Jewish grandparents lived in Poland when the Nazis invaded and the Second World War broke out.

He told journalist Dan Walker, as he went to Auschwitz, one of the most famous monuments of the war, that continuing to acknowledge its horrors - the end result of racism - was a way of stopping the atrocities of the Holocaust being repeated.

Racism is an issue than can become ingrained in society far easier than people expect; the lessons of the Second World War are a testament to this.

The influence that Hitler had over Germany was far-reaching and exploited the poverty of ordinary Germans struggling through economic depression and the need to blame someone else - in this case, Jews - for their grievances. An educated society ended up committing crimes regarded now as the embodiment of evil.

Showing that people can live as one, despite being of different races, is most certainly the way forward in showing that we have moved on to be a better world since the Holocaust. Standing up to racist groups by showing that this is possible will force them further into the minority until they become almost non-existent.

With that in mind, Panorama may have put forward the argument that Poland and the Ukraine are incapable of hosting the Euros - but surely the opposite is true?

With racist factions often recruiting new members on the basis that these people don't understand different cultures and are worried about them encroaching on their society and lives, Euro 2012 is simply the best medicine for this - a brilliantly organised tournament which shows that not only do different nations, cultures and races play as one, but they also have a lot more fun doing so than if they were segregated.

Fans making monkey noises and doing Hitler salutes will be punished severely by Uefa and condemned by the media as wrong and this can only have a positive influence on future generations in Poland and the Ukraine.

It may not be sport's job to bring to light political issues in countries, but it's something that sport seems to naturally do, and it's one of the beauties of it as a whole.

South Africa is a perfect example of this; by banning sport from the country in the 1980s due to Apartheid, the rest of the world brought light to an important issue; in 1995 the Rugby World Cup brought the nation together more than ever before; and in 2010, the Football World Cup showed that not only have they made huge progression since the Apartheid era, but the country is becoming a nation that is becoming a safe place for tourists to travel to.

Poland and Ukraine can be the same, and programmes such as Panorama and the likes of Sol Campbell should be encouraging people to make a stand against the backward views of some and push the country forward. If this can happen, the Euros will achieve far more than just producing one of the best football tournaments in the sporting calendar.

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